Living off the fat of the land

I love winter.  I love the shutting down, the darkening, the silence of it. 
So right now, from the gardens, we are only eating potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, beets, garlic and onions.  In the freezer and in jars we have tomatoes, beets, applesauce, raspberries, peaches, basil pesto, sweet corn, green beans, grape juice, pickles, sauerkraut, and plum jam .   Not bad for part-time gardeners.  Arugula and spinach are sprouted outside, but who knows if it will make it.  We didn't exactly get an early start.
In the spirit of supporting family and trying to be more socially interactive (soon!  tags!  maybe!) I will add my nephew's youtube video about their darling cat, Truman.  Merry Christmas.

Not just an ordinary carrot

Yesterday we dug up the carrots still in the ground.   We wrote off the disappointing germination to not enough water, too hot early in the spring after planting, and unknown elements of gardening.  Digging them actually produced some results.  What standard do we gardeners place on our harvest, that every crop look like the pile of vegetables at the Pike Place Market?  THIS IS NOT A HELPFUL ATTITUDE!
A half of a storebought carrot in the crisper drawer provided contrast for the latest harvested jewels.  NO COMPARISON can be made.  Every single post-frost carrot exploded with sweetness.  I wanted to sing!  To celebrate the noble carrot and all gifts of creation!
Dolly Parton sang a song on Sesame Street once about 14-carrot love.

Placeholder for the carrot picture not taken

14 carrot love!
That is what we got here -
14 carrot love!
It`s better than some flowers
Or candy on a ring...

Ode to the Carrot 
The carrot has an orange hue,
So lovely and so bright.
Seeing it, I take my cue
And gobble every bite.

The Last Pear

"OMG"  I'm about to eat the last wonderfully succulent sweet pear.  It came from a tree that some construction worker building a house next door to us gave us, when he observed our planting trees, among a collection of tiny unidentifiable saplings he had.  Already I can't wait until next summer to see if they come again.  In this post, I will officially give all credit to the bees.

I got this picture from our BeeQueen Kathleen.  It shows the high intelligence of a healthy swarm, waiting for their green light.

Autumn Reigns

Beautiful summery fall days have nearly given way to the snow that's forecast for Tuesday. We drained the water lines for the well today. 
This week I finally planted some arugula, red spinach, and maybe lettuce --although I can't remember--in a grow-box.  Today I noticed they had sprouted.  Also I finally planted the garlic. I tried to choose the nicest heads and planted a nice selection of Chesnok, Oregon Blue, and Susanville, which is what we had last year.  The Chesnok is a hard neck garlic, and has a nice full spicy flavor.    I confess I've only been using the hard neck because I understand it has a shorter shelf life.
The potatoes and sweet potatoes have been dug. Sauerkraut is fermenting. We've had a good crop of onions--can you ever have too many onions? The black beans are finally shelled and in jars.  Pumpkins have been harvested and we cooked the first one tonight because I have a hunger for pumpkin pie.
The earth cries out for moisture, which we hope does come soon. 

Value-Added

On the best kind of recent fall day, I was out picking through the black beans we planted this year.  No wind, bright sun, the red oak tree in front looking as good as she ever does.  Planting things like shell beans-- which come cheap to buy and take awhile to come to fruition, and some work to make usable--are one of my favorite things to plant.  Kind of like our potatoes this year.  B came home from the store the other day and said, "You wouldn't believe how cheap potatoes were at the store!"  I do believe it, but I replied that we were not planting a garden because it saves a lot of money.  It's a value-added kind of thing.
Reasons to plant potatoes (or black beans, or an apple tree):

1. The mailing from the United Farm Workers this week included pictures of worker housing.  Since most produce harvested in the U.S. is harvested by the kind of folks this union represents, it's good to pay attention to their working conditions. The photo that caught my attention more than people sleeping in their vehicle or in old motels, was the one with 6 people in a one-room shack with no utilities.  Each person who lives there pays $180 a month rent.  Knowing where our food comes from helps us know the real price, beyond $0.99 for a 10 pound bag. 
2. I read a book once by the brilliant science-fiction writer Octavia Butler.  She writes into a future where people are surviving drought and the state of California is burning.  Survival is the name of the game; the protagonist making it, in part because she knows something about seeds and growing food.  Older people in our contemporary society often speak of surviving the Depression because they lived on a farm and "we were never hungry".  Not to cross over into the survivalist mentality of those storing up food in Montana, but then again, they may be right about some things...
3. Just take a bite of a peach or an ear of corn that you grew yourself.  Taste how much spicier the arugula is.  How much juicier the pear.  How much better the salsa is when it's made with genuine vine-ripened tomatoes.
4. It's a matter of pride.  Or is it humility, because one never really knows how it works...or doesn't.  All this life and nourishment is merely a miracle.
5. Caring for the earth and co-creating beauty makes the world a better place for the whole.

Grape Juice

All over town established grape vines bulge with unappreciated grapes.  At our place, we didn't inherit much in the way of landscaping, but a lovely white grapevine, probably planted in the 1940's or 50's, survives even the deep drought of this place--its roots surely tap the water table twenty feet down. A purple grapevine grows on our west fence, choked by junk elm trees and Virginia Creeper; but between the two of them we have no shortage of grapes.  Sometimes I like to imagine that Italian immigrants planted them to put wine on their table.  In any case, undoubtedly they were used well.  Here at Whiteplum they mostly go to juice.

Here's my recipe:When stemming the grapes, remember acid-etched fingers last a long time and gloves really make a difference.Cook grapes until the skins pop.  I add about 2 cups of water to every lettuce spinner full (maybe 14 cups) of washed and stemmed grapes.  I strain the resulting product through a few layers of cheesecloth in a strainer, and refrigerate the resulting juice overnight, or longer.  Strain the juice from this product into a pan, heat it to boiling, and process it in a water bath.  In the past squeezing out the most possible from the product makes the juice too cloudy.  I never add sugar because it's sweet enough without it.  The recipe (Better Homes and Gardens cookbook) is for a grape juice "concentrate" which calls for sugar and to which one adds water to serve.  Skip it.  Just drink juice.  If desired, water down when serving.

The Greatest Dog of the 21st Century and his Successor

Our beloved dog Blue died a year ago this week, from a hemangiosarcoma, an aggressive cancer we didn't even know he had until the day he left us.  Here he is pictured on a dog breeds website.  He's also pictured on our web profile.  A very handsome guy.  As my friend Paul says, Blue was only the greatest dog of the 21st century.  I got him from Leland, who loved this lab-bullmastiff mix from puppyhood, but found living on the street with a dog was hard on the dog. Eventually Blue came to us and entered our hearts. Leland later got off the street himself, too.  We still miss you, Blue!

In December 2009 we got a new dog, a Great Pyrenees  we named Cobi, after the 1992 Olympics mascot--below-- which was supposedly modeled after a Great Pyr. (Make your own decision).Cobi of WhitePlum Farm looks a little different  than Cobi-the-Olympic-mascot, but very typical of his breed.  We got him from a rescue place who called him Joey, rescuing him at a shelter in Arkansas before he could be euthanized unclaimed .  (Only his closest friends may call him Cobi Joe).  He was great with the ladies (the chickens) until they disappeared, and we liked to imagine that he would protect them from predators, like his breed historically protected the herd from bears and wolves.  The day we lost the girls, we had left him inside the house, as it was a very hot day for a guy in a fur coat, and we weren't gone long.
Sorry Cobi, a lot of people are out of work these days...

Keeping it on the DL

A metro neighborhood paper unexpectedly wrote a story about our place which was published Labor Day weekend.  Hmmm.. Just when the girls disappeared.  We got a phone message last week from a woman who was interested in learning more about our "urban farm" because she'd read the article.
B. and I have always sparred a bit about calling our place a farm.  He does so easily and without shame.  To me, it's disrespectful of real farmers.  We do have a large garden, a small orchard, and well... we used to have three chickens.

I remember Dad once told me you have to have 14 acres to qualify as a farm in the U.S.census.  I don't know if that is still true or not. The IRS says you need to sell something to deduct farmer things, so not a farm by those standards.  Our friend Galen said they used to have 3000 chickens (or some number larger than three).  That is agriculture--or maybe it will be again, now that mega chicken agriculture is getting busted.  It was reported that the two Iowa operations involved in the salmonella recall housed a combined 7.7 million caged hens.  Does that qualify as a farm in the U.S. census?

Small is beautiful.

The girls have vanished

All of a sudden today we realized the chickens were gone.  Vanished.  Last night B. closed the cage, as the ladies always put themselves to bed about dark. This morning no girls waiting to get out.  No poop under the perch.  No eggs to collect.  No chickens.  Only yesterday people had dropped by and Checkers, Rosie, and Lacey were hanging around begging for scraps from our visitors (not cool).  Maybe they disappeared because I complained about their poor manners.  

It is as improbable to picture someone walking into the yard and picking them up, as it is to imagine that they somehow breached homeland security and waddled up the street.  Advance Auto Parts put a flier up.  The neighbor to the east said he had seen foxes going over the fence between our yards.  He said at his house in Santa Fe foxes came in the night to eat apples.  Another friend said a lot of cats were being killed by foxes in her neighborhood right now.  Yet, nowhere was there a sign of feathers or trauma of any kind.

I think it's some kind of object lesson about the impermanence of things, even livestock, even pets, even my own very life itself.  I'm reading a novel right now about the internment of citizens of Japanese descent during World War II.  Poof.  At first people burned anything connecting them to Japan, that might arouse suspicion.  They found places to store things, imagining they might return soon.  In reality they ended up imprisoned, and in most cases lost all their possessions.  In reality land speculators snatched up vacant properties formerly occupied by evacuees. 

Yesterday there were chickens.  Today we don't know where they went.  Nothing lasts forever.  To quote the Nebbishes, "You work, you save, you put a little bit aside.  You build yourself a cozy place.  The minute you relax and try to enjoy it, Bang! The cardboard flies off the window!!"

Live for today.  Enjoy the time you have.  Even enjoy the stuff you have.  It can't last all that long, really.

 (The good news is maybe the yippy chihuahuas next door will not last forever either.)

Beef: It's (Not) What's For Dinner

Last night I had the usual malaise about figuring out what to have for dinner.  Having a plan early always helps me, because if I wait til dinnertime it's just so much harder to think of it and fix it too.  The mate said "how about a salad?"  He also suggested fish.  I love it when he thinks of something that sounds like it might be good.
When we sat down to eat we thought our food was so pretty we should take a picture of it.

It had garden lettuce (supplemented with a little store lettuce), gold and red tomatoes, yukon gold potatoes, edamame with garlic onion and thyme, carrots, red and green pepper, and grilled salmon.  We did not grow the salmon. 
Honey thought he didn't like edamame (green soybeans), but that is because he hadn't really tried them.  Al wanted to plant them, and he and I shelled a container of them the previous week.  I ate some one night when partner was out, just sauteed some garlic and a bit of onion in olive oil, then put in the beans, a few sprigs of thyme, and salt.  Voila!  Add beer and you've got dinner for one.  I ended up sticking the bag of beans in the freezer because I thought they'd freeze well and if I was the only one eating them I would regard them as my personal stash.  On salad night the frozen beans worked fine, and now honey thinks he likes edamame after all.

Club Lilford

A few years ago we were impressed by our friends Chester and Daniel's trellis for green beans.  They made it simply from a section of heavy livestock fence from the farm store.  Last winter we covered ours with plastic and used it as a sort of primitive hoop house.  Our granddaughter Lillian dubbed it "Club Lilford" and posted a sign saying a password was required.
This summer I wanted to make sure the shelter had more shade than green beans could put out, so I planted some birdhouse gourds on the east wall.  A few lawn chairs, some decorative red salvia in a pot, and a summer retreat is born.  Plus we have a ton of green beans.

Pretty Pickles

Cucumbers actually came into fruition this summer while dill was still fresh. Usually it seems like the dill is drying up by the time we have cucumbers. In the past dill pickles have good flavor, but sometimes are a little too mushy. Mom says they didn’t use a water bath to preserve them, so this time I tried grandma’s recipe. I chilled the cucumbers in ice water in a cooler for (“at least 2 and not more than 8 hours”) as we had gleaned from last year’s “perfect pickle recipe”. Then each sterilized jar got filled with cukes, a head of dill, a grape leaf, a couple of garlic cloves and peppercorns; then covered with boiling brine. Two jars didn’t seal I think because a little bit of pickle was sticking up a little too far, so those are now in the fridge. The rest, we will wait 6 weeks to know how they taste. But we already know they are definitely pretty.

Checkers lays an egg

Checkers went to the nesting box.  Lacey and Rosie were beside themselves.... “where is our sister?” they demanded.  They ended up coming back to the coop to see what was up.  She finally gave up and left with them, settling herself in the dust as though sitting on a nest.

It looked like she was having a silent scream, eyes shut and having her siesta time, then all of a sudden they’d pop open and she’d open her beak repeatedly, making no sound, as though in pain.  Finally, the next morning, she put out, in her nest. 

Since then she has laid another little pullet egg, followed by 2 no-shell eggs (just the egg membrane covers the egg), followed by a big 'ole double yolk egg, and another ordinary egg.  The other  two birds are trying to get used to not doing every living thing together as they usually do.  Our leading lady doesn't like an audience while leaving her deposit. 

Mulberry pie

How is it that we have accepted just letting a gorged crop
of mulberries mature and fall to the ground, unfulfilled?
Al insisted on making a mulberry pie. 
This turned out to be an extremely good idea.

(June 22)

summer is upon us

The biggest thing is we finally got 3 chickens in mid-April.  They are Checkers, Lacey, and Rosie, who are Plymouth Barred Rock, Silver-Laced Wyandott, and Rhode Island Red breeds, respectively.  They were about 8 weeks old when we picked them up, and we're thinking at 22 weeks somebody will begin laying eggs.  The bets are on.  These ladies are pretty funny to watch--they vacillate between daring self-confidence in venturing out, and acting like a bunch of chickens.  They do stick together like sisters, and while it seems like they are pooping all the time, are amazingly tidy in their habits.

It's that time of year where things are finally planted (for the most part),  the bindweed is a-bloom, and there is a shortage of organic matter to dump on all the weeds that want to tie us to the center of the earth.  The potatoes look gorgeous, the corn is knee-high...all of a SUDDEN, and the garlic is about ready to harvest.
At dinner one of my favorite things is to review what has come from the garden, it usually is at least 3 or 4 things this time of year, because one has to count garlic.  It might include corn or raspberries from the reserve in the freezer, a few types of greens, peas, salad.  Next year hopefully it will include carrots, but our luck with carrots this year is not notable.  Too hot to keep them alive til they get bigger.
Here's a new favorite recipe for black bean corn salad.  Mix a cup of (cooked) black beans, 2 cups of frozen corn kernels (no need to thaw), about a 1/2 a red bell pepper diced, some onion (whatever type is on hand, original recipe called for 1/2 a red onion, but assorted green onions are good too), 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin, 2 teaspoons tabasco, about 2 or 3 tablespoons of lime juice, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste.  I like it for using up frozen corn in a tasty easy way.